Friday knitting blog 01/14/2011

Well, here we are again on a lovely Friday morning with knitting progress for the week. 

First up, we have the socks that I'm making for Jennifer. I had actually hoped to be done by now, but it's been a busy week, so they're not all the way done, but soon. I just need to find some TV that I can listen to and not actually look too hard at, and these should finish up soon. 

As always click on any picture to enlarge

Now for this week's swatches. To the non-knitters, some of these descriptions are knit-jargon heavy. Try not to let your eyes glaze over too much, but part of why I'm knitting this is to form and pass on opinions on various stitch patterns. 

January 8: Knotted Openwork. This actually is really similar to the pattern from January 7, Crocus Buds (see last week's swatch post) but all the pattern stitches are worked in the same row and not offset, so it has a different look. I like this one. Yeah, I messed up a bit in the bottom left hand corner but this swatch gave me trouble so when I got it mostly right on the 3rd knitting of it, I decided to just let it go. 

January 9: Tunnel Lace. This one has good texture, but even though there are yarn overs and technically it is sort of lacy, I find it difficult to see with the ridges created by the P3tog action that happens every 4th row. Tunnels I see; lace not so much. 

January 10: Herringbone Lace Rib. A 2-row repeat, which is nice and nothing too taxing. Some P2tog, but I can handle that. 

January 11: Eyelets: The week's simplest pattern. On row 3 of the 4-row repeat there's some YO followed by K2tog. Easy peasy and looks pretty nice. As an aside, this is the  pattern for my brother Darrin's birthday (he was 45).

January 12: Waterfall: This one was fun, a 6-row repeat with only 1 oddity (and by oddity I mean a row in which the YO is not immediately offset by a decrease; the decrease happens a couple of rows later). This one would make an interesting ribbing pattern, maybe on a cardigan like Mr. Greenjeans, as it really draws in a lot and has good stretch. This is the pattern for Little Miss, who was born on Wednesday to my contributor, Lindsay Jean.  

January 13: Lacy Bubbles. Dudes, I'll be honest, I don't like this pattern at all. To me, the fabric looks like it has a pox of some kind. Knitting the swatch was useful in a couple of ways, though. First, it kept me distracted while Amanda was out whooping it up for her birthday last night (She was 23). Second, I had a chance to try out a technique I'd read about on Ravelry for P5tog (I know just the thought made me shudder, too). When a pattern calls for P5tog, do this instead: Slip the first 2 stitches purl wise from left to right; then P3tog (which I don't mind, but 3 is the limit for me), then pass the first 2 stitches on the right hand needle over the stitch created by the P3tog as if to bind off ( I pass them 1 at a time, but you can pass them together). Looks identical to P5tog (I did it both ways to be sure) and it's much easier on the hands. 

January 14: Lace and Cables. Easily my favorite pattern of the week. As always, I changed the S1, K1, PSSO direction to SSK. If I were making this one again, I would probably also change the S1, K2tog, PSSO to a centered double decrease (slip 2 tog knit wise, K1, pass slipped stitches over) because I prefer to have the center stitch of a double decrease on the top instead of the right hand stitch, but that's a personal thing. 

That's all in the land of knitting and swatches for this week.